Descending
by Grav
Summary: When the elevator doors open, Kate's gun is in her hands.


**AN**: I should stop spending Saturday afternoons writing Jack the Ripper…but I couldn't pass up this prompt at the sfa_history battle: _Kate Freelander, John Druitt. Dealing with Jack the Ripper._

**Spoilers**: For King and Country

**Disclaimer**: Not even remotely mine.

**Rating**: Teen

**Characters**: Kate Freelander, John Druitt

**Summary**: When the elevator doors open, Kate's gun is in her hands.

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**Descending**

When the elevator doors open, Kate's gun is in her hands.

It's loaded, but the safety is on. She hadn't actually been planning to shoot anything. But the elevators can take their sweet time answering the button, and she'd remembered that last time she had cleaned it, the slide seemed a little sticky. So she's just taken it out to have a quick look.

Jack the Ripper is in the elevator.

She can't help what happens next. Knee, hip, shoulder, elbow, her whole body lining up behind the gun. She doesn't raise it, not quite all the way, but there cannot be any mistake that she saw him and went instantly into guard. She thinks for a moment that maybe she should relax, drop back to normal and, if he asks, pretend that she's hunting something that got loose from the basement this morning. She decides that would be stupid. She knows what he is, after all.

"I can get off here, if you like," he says quietly. It's not the menacing kind of quiet she's heard in his voice before, but the regretful one. They one that knows exactly what he's done and exactly how he'll never pay it back, and grieves every damn minute. Or at least the minutes he's not spending up to his elbows in someone else's blood.

Jack the Ripper was not one of the monsters of her childhood. She'd heard of him, of course, because there are a lot of crime shows on TV right now, and they all eventually mention him one way or another, but she didn't actually know that much about him before she came to work at the Sanctuary. Then she made it her business to know, of course, because that was the smart thing to do.

"It's fine," she says shortly, and wonders if he thinks she's lying.

She isn't lying, not really, and anyway she makes it a practice never to lie to people who are legitimately insane. She is on edge though, for reasons she can't really articulate. She's sat with him in Helen's office, fought alongside him when the Cabal attacked. Hell, she's gone three rounds toe to toe with people worse than him. But never in an elevator. Never in an elevator she's already been stuck in once before.

The door slides shut, and the elevator begins to sink further into the Sanctuary.

"Thank you," he says. He doesn't look at her.

"For what?" She spits out the words with more venom than she needs to.

She looked up the pictures of Mary Kelly on wikipedia. She's seen a lot of disgusting things in her life, but those stark black and white photos capture evil in a way she hadn't thought about before. It was easy enough to feed a man to a giant thing with tentacles and not have to worry about the mess. It was easier still if you said you were doing it to save someone else. But there was nothing humanitarian about those walls and the way the body was splayed. There was barely anything human.

"For helping Helen resuscitate me when I was dead," he says.

"That wasn't for you," Kate says without thinking, but as soon as she gives voice to the words she knows they're true. She came back to consciousness to find her boss shaking her gently, and when Magnus asked her to help get him down to the infirmary, she hadn't hesitated.

"I know," he says calmly. "But I'm still grateful."

His hands are flat against the side of his coat, but it's hard to tell from where she's standing if there's a knife in his pocket. It probably wouldn't make that much of a difference, she realizes. He's twice her size and she's pretty much cornered already, and he hadn't needed a knife to take her down the first time. Of course, he's cornered too, trapped by the EM shield and standing in an elevator with a woman with a gun.

She considers him again, like she's looking at him for the first time. Yes, he's still Jack the Ripper, but he's also walked willingly into a house that is, so long as the power's on, a prison. He's nearly died inside these walls at least twice (depending on how you count), and yet he's here. With her. In the elevator. Standing serenely, and waiting for his floor. She wonders if that counts for something.

"It won't happen again," she says, but this time she thinks she might be lying. Helen Magnus is a terrible influence. Kate used to see everything in comforting shades of grey and now the world is technicolour and full of choices.

"I shouldn't expect it," he replies.

The elevator clanks to a halt, and Kate forces herself not to fidget while the door slides open. She walks out ahead of him, attempting to maintain her swagger as much as possible. She's unnerved, but not afraid, and that's an important distinction when you work with monsters like she does.

When the elevator doors close, Kate's gun is still in her hands. She's not stupid, after all.

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**fin**

Gravity_Not_Included, March 12, 2011**  
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End file.
